Peace Education and Education for Peace

Introduction

What are peace educators doing when they educate? What is happening when peace learners learn? In this chapter, I will offer an explication of these two questions, and related matters. The discussion of peace education presented here is unconventional, primarily because of the distinction made between “peace education” and “education for peace.” Most treatments of peace education tend to conflate or confuse these educational pedagogies and purposes.¹ Here, we distinguish between them for pedagogical and practical purposes. Peace education and education for peace, to be explained below, cannot be too narrow and cannot be too wide. If these two educational complexes are too small in purview, each will be insufficient and important educational opportunities will be lost. If they are too undisciplined, they will lose the content and focus that gives them power. Both in peace education and education for peace, forces that push out, and forces that pull in, are at work. Both peace education and education for peace work from large sets of knowledge to a narrower focus, and work from narrow focus to larger domains of knowledge. Both are valuable and work in symbiotic relationship.

By “peace education” we mean the education that peace studies scholars offer to undergraduate and graduate students toward the end of seeing them become professional peacebuilders. This professional space can be in the academy, or the field, or both. Programs of this kind include education regarding theories of conflict, conflict analysis, conflict and systems mapping, conflict prevention, and conflict transformation; theories of peace, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and peace tech; theories of reconciliation; theories of justice, global justice, transitional justice, and restorative justice; sustainable development and resilience; human security; human rights and human capabilities theory; monitoring and evaluation; mediation and negotiation; postwar reconstruction; and all these matters and their subsystems related to history, gender, economics, political theories and institutions from local governance to multilateral and transnational organizations, to global federalism; culture, religion and theology; environmental ethics, sustainability, and justice; art and sports; media, journalism, and communication; linguistic, rhetoric, and discourse theory; technology; the interdependent looping relationship between theory and practice; and more.

By “education for peace” we mean a much broader domain of education still. Here, we think of all the endeavors, projects, pathways, pursuits, and professions that typically follow educational programs—and are used to build a more peaceful and just world, on scales from the local to the global. The danger here is to think of any and all education as education “for peace.” It is obvious enough, of course, that a person with an education in mathematics, biology, accounting, or music theory might use their education for peacebuilding purposes. But these disciplines are not intrinsically peacebuilding. Indeed, they can all be used for oppressive and violent purposes.

“Education for peace,” here refers to disciplines and educational programs that have an intrinsic relationship to peace and peacebuilding. For example, education for developing educators of children and youth; education for democracy; ecological, environmental, and economic sustainability, education in the health professions, law, agriculture and animal husbandry, certain forms of engineering (say, bridge building), hydrology, the manufacture of certain basic goods, and more. Under rare conditions, these educational programs can be used for perverse reasons, against peace, justice, and reconciliation. Nonetheless, overwhelmingly, they are used to provide or protect human security and make the world a better place.